360° Recycling

Sustainability Initiatives

Mining, refining, and recycling of Rare Earths have serious environmental consequences if not properly managed.

Rare Earth Elements (REEs) are critical to the manufacturing of consumer electronics such as laptops, desktop computers, tablets, and mobile phones. The Chinese monopoly on the market and the challenges associated with mining REEs, has fueled interest in recycling the metals from used electronic devices as an alternative source. This approach comes with it's own unique set of challenges, as many devices contain less than one gram of valuable REEs, and are designed in such a way that the metals are difficult to separate from other components. Once they have been removed, the REEs have to be separated and purified and must be combined with other materials to create usable products.